Large Japanese style back tattoo of a samurai in armour with a topknot, shaded in black and grey, with red maple leaves and a purple flower on the arm.

Samurai warrior and maple leaves across a back

Japanese · Back · Mixed · Photo

A large back piece shows a samurai in armour with a topknot, turned to the side with a flowing cape behind him. The warrior and armour are shaded in black and grey with smooth gradients and fine detail in the plates and scales. Red maple leaves drift across the back and shoulder, and a purple flower sits on the arm at the left edge of the frame.

Japanese Realism Back Upper arm Warrior Armour Cape Maple leaves Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lacing on the left shoulder had gone stiff in the damp, and Eiji had to soak each silk cord in warm tea before he could draw it through the iron scales. Master Gen sat at the back of the shop with his pipe cold in his fist, saying nothing, which meant the work was going the way he wanted. Every plate overlapped the one below it, like the scales of a carp climbing a weir, and a single crooked loop would have undone the whole breastplate.

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The man who had ordered it had come through the pass in the rain three weeks before. His topknot was tied so tight it pulled at his eyebrows, and his cape was the colour of wet slate. He paid in silver and asked for one thing: that the armour be ready before the maples turned. Gen had laughed at that. The maples turned when the wind changed, he said, and nobody ordered the wind. That morning the wind had changed, and red leaves came skittering under the door, one catching on Eiji's sleeve and clinging there while he worked.

In the afternoon a rider came up from the valley with the warrior's horse on a lead rope. The animal was lathered and alone. The rider said the man had gone down at the river crossing, where the ford ran high from the storms, and that he had asked, with his last breath, whether the armour was finished. Eiji sat down on the step with the breastplate across his knees. Gen took it from him, turned it so the low sun ran along the plates, and hung it on the peg by the door.

At dusk Eiji tied the last knot and left the door open. By morning the floor was red with leaves, and they had drifted up against the grey steel until the chest plate looked like it was standing in a current. Nobody had touched the lacing. Eiji found it loose and swaying, as though something had stepped out of it.